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L'ignorance

3.73 of 5 stars 3.73 · rating details · 6,190 ratings · 283 reviews

« Sur l'avenir, tout le monde se trompe. L'homme ne peut être sûr que du moment présent. Mais est-ce bien vrai ? Peut-il vraiment le connaître, le présent ? Est-il capable de le juger ? Bien sûr que non. Car comment celui qui ne connaît pas l'avenir pourrait-il comprendre le sens du présent ? Si nous ne savons pas vers quel avenir le présent nous mène, comment pourrions-no...more

Paperback, 192 pages

Published 2003 by Gallimard (first published January 1st 2000)

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Jul 27, 2012 Giulia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adelphi-scaffale-blu, mitteleuropei

”In spagnolo, añoranza viene dal verbo añorar («provare nostalgia»), che viene dal verbo catalano enyorar, a sua volta derivato dal latino ignorare. Alla luce di questa etimologia, la nostalgia appare come la sofferenza dell’ignoranza. Tu sei lontano, e io non so che ne è di te. Il mio paese è lontano, e io non so cosa succede laggiù."

Irena e Josef si incontrano per caso. Il loro incontro dura pochissimo, il tempo di iniziare una storia d’amore e di considerarla finita senza averla mai vissuta....more ”In spagnolo, añoranza viene dal verbo añorar («provare nostalgia»), che viene dal verbo catalano enyorar, a sua volta derivato dal latino ignorare. Alla luce di questa etimologia, la nostalgia appare come la sofferenza dell’ignoranza. Tu sei lontano, e io non so che ne è di te. Il mio paese è lontano, e io non so cosa succede laggiù."

Irena e Josef si incontrano per caso. Il loro incontro dura pochissimo, il tempo di iniziare una storia d’amore e di considerarla finita senza averla mai vissuta. Si rincontrano poi dopo tanti anni, dopo il loro esilio, durante il loro ritorno in patria. Entrambi coscienti di quel viaggio che li farà approdare in una terra che non è più la loro. Come Ulisse riconobbe l’ulivo che divenne quindi certificazione del suo effettivo ritorno in patria, Irena e Josef riconosceranno luoghi dimenticati da tempo, parleranno con vecchie amicizie, mai sentendosi però, effettivamente, di nuovo a casa. Perché manca loro l’opportunità di narrare. Nessuno chiede niente di quegli anni di esilio. E, senza l’esperienza della narrazione, senza il dono demiurgico della parola, la loro vita resta ancorata al passato, non si trasporta con loro verso casa, non ha il tempo di affezionarsi di nuovo ai luoghi dell’infanzia che già viene di nuovo strappata via.

È estremamente difficile esprimere in poche righe il contenuto di questo romanzo. Sebbene esso sia di breve respiro, si estende come un infinito poema ben oltre la sua conclusione. Ogni parola di Kundera è un piede giambico che ricostruisce un poema che narra di viaggi interminabili. Perché, a ben vedere, dietro l’esilio di Ulisse, o di Irena, o di Josef, si intravede la ricerca di una patria nascosta. Di quei dolci momenti in cui la propria esistenza non ha bisogno di guardare al futuro, nella speranza di qualcosa di migliore, o al passato, nel rimpianto di qualcosa perduto.

La nostalgia è una sofferenza talmente forte che basta a se stessa. E annulla i ricordi. A Parigi, Irena non ha compatrioti con i quali parlare del suo passato, così i suoi ricordi pian piano svaniscono. Resta il dolore della nostalgia, che basta a se stesso. E, nel tentativo di trovare un fratello col quale condividere questo vuoto, Irena rincontra per caso Josef, malato di memoria masochistica, che cancella il passato ogni qualvolta che questo gli rende il presente invivibile.

Due esuli. In fuga dalla patria, da loro stessi. Bisognosi d’una riva, come lo siamo tutti, in fondo.

Questo romanzo è a dir poco commovente. È di una dolcezza e di una verità struggenti. Uno di quei libri che ti insegnano tanto e che devono essere a più riprese rispolverati per ripassarne la lezione e ricordarne la bellezza. Che almeno questa non fugga via.
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Aug 31, 2012 Rami Khrais rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

هذه الرواية تحكي عن الحنين، عن العودة. عدتُ، بحنين، لقراءة كونديرا بعد سنتين أو يزيد من لقائي الأوّل به في روايته "المزحة". الثيمة الرئيسيّة في رواية كونديرا هي قدرتها الغرائبيّة على "تخليص" الناس من يقينهم، ودفعهم الدؤوب، وبهدوء، إلى إعادة التفكير في مسلّمات ظنّوا أنّهم استراحوا لها تماما. وهكذا في "الجهل"، يدور اليقين حول فكرة الحنين، وهي فكرة ملازمة للشعور الإنساني آخذة مكانا قصيّا في الروح، لكنّ كونديرا يجهد في تخليص شخوص الرواية من عبئها عبر الحفر في ماهيّة الذاكرة، في تأكيده على هشاشتها وا...more هذه الرواية تحكي عن الحنين، عن العودة. عدتُ، بحنين، لقراءة كونديرا بعد سنتين أو يزيد من لقائي الأوّل به في روايته "المزحة". الثيمة الرئيسيّة في رواية كونديرا هي قدرتها الغرائبيّة على "تخليص" الناس من يقينهم، ودفعهم الدؤوب، وبهدوء، إلى إعادة التفكير في مسلّمات ظنّوا أنّهم استراحوا لها تماما. وهكذا في "الجهل"، يدور اليقين حول فكرة الحنين، وهي فكرة ملازمة للشعور الإنساني آخذة مكانا قصيّا في الروح، لكنّ كونديرا يجهد في تخليص شخوص الرواية من عبئها عبر الحفر في ماهيّة الذاكرة، في تأكيده على هشاشتها وانتقائيّتها، ليواجه الحنين هنا مُعضلة التساؤل عن قوّته وألقه الأوّلين. ومثل غالبيّة روايات كونديرا، ليس هناك حدث مُؤسّس ومركزي في السياق السردي. تنبني رواياته على "الصدفة" –أليست المزحة، بشكل أو بآخر، وجها من وجوه المصادفة الضاحكة؟!- وعند هذه الصدفة تتقاطع الشخصيّات، الهشّة في غالبيّتها، لتصنع رواية، يؤهلها فعل المُصادفة فيها لأن تبقى خفيفة وقادرة على استيعاب ملهاة أو مأساة شخوصها بدأب، دون أن يُخلّ ذلك بالتوازن القلق لعالم رواية كونديرا. تبقى السياسة دائما في خلفيّة المشهد، ضابط الإيقاع، أو "وحي الحدث" في رواية كونديرا. من مسارها العام –الحرب الباردة وموقع التشيك، بلده، فيها- يلتقط كونديرا المسارات الشخصيّة والفرديّة جدا ليقرأها، أو يكتبها في ضوء المسار العام وتأثيره الذي مثل سحابة خفيفة على روايته. على هذا الأساس، يصبح غزو الجيش السوفياتي لبراغ عام 68 فاتحة لحكايات متفرّدة لمهاجرين تركوا التشيك لعقدين، وفوجئوا، وهنا تكمن مفارقة كونديرا في "تفتيت اليقين"، بعد عودتهم في عام انهيار جدار برلين، بأن ذاكرتهم لا تُسعفهم على إعادة توطين أنفسهم في بلدهم الأم، وأن "ذاكرة الوطن"، أو ذاكرة شعبهم، قد وضعتهم على رفوفها المغبرّة المُهملة، تاركة إيّاهم في دوامة القلق الدائم بين حنينهم المُقيم وتاريخهم الموزّع في محاولة الإجابة عن سؤال: أنحن هنا أم هناك؟(less)

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Jun 26, 2012 Megan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed

3.5 stars

Ignorance is a modern retelling of The Odyssey, focusing on two emigrants who were forced from their native Czech Republic during the reign of Communism in 1968. Irena flees to Paris with her husband Martin while Josef ends up settling in Denmark. Irena and Josef had met and flirted in a Czech bar briefly years before in their twenties, and they meet by chance again in their homeland after the dust has settled from the collapse of Communism in 1989. While their memories of that first en...more 3.5 stars

Ignorance is a modern retelling of The Odyssey, focusing on two emigrants who were forced from their native Czech Republic during the reign of Communism in 1968. Irena flees to Paris with her husband Martin while Josef ends up settling in Denmark. Irena and Josef had met and flirted in a Czech bar briefly years before in their twenties, and they meet by chance again in their homeland after the dust has settled from the collapse of Communism in 1989. While their memories of that first encounter at the bar differ greatly, they both feel like Odysseus returning to his homeland of Ithaca, with everything different but somehow the same. They each have to come to terms with being emigrants back in a place that no longer feels like home, with friends and family who can't (or won't even try) to understand what they're going through. Through all of this confusion and haziness, memories fade, twist, and are lost. Kundera explores the minds and memories of Irena and Josef as well as human beings as a collective, showing how we each form memories (sometimes as we wish things would have happened or more optimistically or pessimistically, depending on the situation when the memory occurred) and how we forget (sometimes ignorantly, sometimes on purpose).

I had no idea this was more of a philosophical book going into it. I only knew of Kundera from The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which has been on my to-read list forever since it's on the BBC book challenge list and a lot of lists of books to read before you die. I think everyone's probably had a relationship that didn't end how you would've liked and that you sometimes replay over in your mind, trying to figure out how it could've gone better and what your life would've been like if you'd had the foresight to fix it while you had the chance. That's what attracted me to this book and it was really a fascinating and illuminating work on that subject. Everyone remembers things differently and there's no guarantee that you're going to make a big enough impact on someone's life for them to remember you for as long as you remember them. While that's kind of depressing, it's also true, and Kundera writes about these abstract ideas like time, memory, home, and absence beautifully. There were several quotes that really resonated with me (Kundera's writing is very profound and inspires lots of "aha" moments) but here are a few I could find:

“The more vast the amount of time we've left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it.”

“And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a love the way we reread a book or resee a film.”

“The feeling, the irrepressible yearning to return, suddenly reveals to her the existence of the past, the power of the past, of her past; in the house of her life there are windows now, windows opening to the rear, onto what she has experienced; from now on her existence will be inconceivable without these windows.”

Although there were some parts where either the translation got a little confusing or it was just getting a little too philosophical for me, I really enjoyed this book and look forward to reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being soon. You might want to google "Prague Spring" before reading it if you're not familiar with it (as I was not and got a bit lost at times - history was never my strong suit) just so you have a better grasp of the setting and what the main characters are going through. This one probably needs a re-reading sometime in the future so I can better enjoy it and savor Kundera's messages (and probably give it one more star).(less)

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Mar 30, 2007 علی rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: world-modern-literature

کوندرا را به این دلیل بسیار دوست دارم که مرا در چهارچوب بسته ی یک روایت زندانی نمی کند. خواندن کونرا مثل این است که دوستی را پس از سال ها در یک کافه ملاقات کنید و در حالی که به قصه ی روزگار رفته ی او گوش می دهید، قهوه تان را می نوشید، به موسیقی که از بلندگوی کافه پخش می شود، گوش می کنید، گهگاه متوجه ی صحبت ها و خنده هایی از میزهای کناری می شوید، صدای عبور و مرور خیابان در پس پشت این همه جاری ست، دوره گردی چیزی می فروشد، عبور تراموای، و همه چیز، درست مثل خود زندگی، ...
I like Kundra because he doe...more

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Mar 16, 2013 Michael Vagnetti rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A fictional calculus of "nostalgia": who you are, where you are from, where you are going, what you remember. The writing begins with a foundation of multi-lingual etymology and classical history, and then its characters are put to the task, often under harsh light, of dramatizing the word. They define it through an intimate choreography. This is a beautiful, parsimonious, and complex technique.

What matters is kept in obvious relief: emotions, words, and decisions. Although not everyone is an e...more

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Mar 04, 2008 Kristen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club

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Apr 01, 2013 Ann rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. A story of home, memories and coincidences.
It narrates the return of two immigrants to their homeland after 20 years in exile. Irena from Paris, visiting her homeland because her friends and her husband Martin think that she must desire to go back, and convey that is abnormal to stay away after such a long time has passed from the collapse of communism. And Josef from Copenhagen, who is haunted by his dead wife. A man and a woman meet again – one remembering their first meeting the other having...more

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Aug 09, 2012 Katieeoh Lacanlale rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: engrossing, destiny-fate, family, faith, friends, friendship, history, life, love, love-story, loyalty, mysterious, realization, mystery, purity, romance, sweet, suspense, thrilling, young-adult, memories

One word to describe this book: MEMORIES.

It's my first time to read a Milan Kundera book and as I've heard, he really is great author who mostly conveys to books in both Czech and French, apparently cause he's Czech and French. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke. (but I don't even know every single book he wrote except this one)

So there I was stumbling in this book at my local bookstore and I was so intrigued by...more

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Mar 21, 2012 Becky rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Someone needs to give Milan Kundera a chill pill. He's that dark brooding guy that sits at the back of a cafe staring moodily into his black coffee, the boyfriend you try for months to make love you but who at critical moments, suddenly declared it's all too base and animal, and you know, what is love anyway? Just a social construct. Etc etc. Sometimes Ignorance reads beautifully. I particularly enjoyed a lot of the musings on language and derivation of words, and their deviations between cultur...more

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Jun 15, 2011 Pawan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

http://iandbooks.wordpress.com/
I finished reading “Ignorance” by Milan Kundera and I feel like sharing about the book. I had already written about it before I started reading it.

http://iandbooks.wordpress.com/2011/0...

As I was expecting, he has handled this difficult concept in very complex way but it is a great reading. The book looks at the concept of Ignorance from the point of view of Czech expatriates who had left their home country due to communism and have now returned after twenty years....more

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Dec 09, 2009 B-MO rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: culture-and-politics, fiction

Kundera is my favorite of the slew of authors made famous in the west due to their emigration from and outspoken cries against Soviet Communism. Many of the others (i.e. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) have been "made" great due to the wests need to hear these stories. Kundera just "is" good.

An over arching concept of the book is the comparison of a modern day homecoming (post cold war, pre myspace) with that of Odysseus returning to Greece. However, don't feel like you have to be an emegree to enjoy th...more Kundera is my favorite of the slew of authors made famous in the west due to their emigration from and outspoken cries against Soviet Communism. Many of the others (i.e. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) have been "made" great due to the wests need to hear these stories. Kundera just "is" good.

An over arching concept of the book is the comparison of a modern day homecoming (post cold war, pre myspace) with that of Odysseus returning to Greece. However, don't feel like you have to be an emegree to enjoy this book.

The book, like all of Kundera's that I have read, touch on the deepest parts of human psyche...he uses the backdrop of this dramatic return to show the fragility of memory, along with the great buildups of nostalgia that accompany these fragile memories. He weaves these ideas with an over-arching capacity for self-interest which he feels humans can can not get past.

The use of the return to bring all these human feelings to the forefront was, as Kundera hoped, very homer-esque. One of the better peices of the book goes like this:

I imagine the feelings of two people meeting again after many years. In the past they spent some time together, and therefore they think they are linked by the same experience, the same recollections. The same recollections? That's where the misunderstanding starts: they dont have the same recollections; each of them retains two or three small scenes from the past, but each has his own; their recollections are not similar; they dont intersect; and even in terms of quantity they are not comparable: one person remembers the other more then he is remembered; first because memory capacity varies among individuals (an explanation that each of them would find acceptable, but also (and this is more painful to admit) because they don't hold the same importance for each other.

And Milan is not strictly an anti-communist, he does not think in black and white (as is obvious to anyone who has ever read "On laughter and forgetting") despite the wests attempts to brand him as such, and despite his own need to get away from soviet communism. One of the more interesting interactions in the book is between one of the emigres and a communist. Not just a party convert, but an actual communist of conviction who was a communist before it would have been benefit to his career to be so. This character was written as the most sane character in the book, with a litter of well off kids and grand kids, and an air of wisdom with which he brushed aside the pains of the past during discussion.

Anyways...the book was somewhere near awesome...not quite great, definitly good+ and it was an EXTREMELY QUICK READ.

One thought I had, while trying to wrap my mind around the Oddesy thing was the (already allueded to) end of this possibility for disconnect created by the net, which would seem to make these types of encounters a thing of the past (for right now at least)....(less)

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Apr 24, 2012 Akvile rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: well-written

Being an Eastern European and living in UK I can relate a lot to the story and the main characters, even if I belong to a different generation and my circumstances of leaving the country I was born were completely different.

Although I like Milan Kundera as an author, I read this book for my book club meeting. It was very interesting to hear how the others related to the story or what they took from it because I realised that to certain extent it takes to be someone from 'Eastern block' to fully...more

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Feb 24, 2011 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Milan Kundera has one of the most unique and immediately recognizable writing styles I’ve ever encountered. Ignorance is the third of his novels I’ve read, and there was never any doubt in my mind while reading it that, yep, it’s him all right. I find this experience of familiarity with an author quite pleasant. The other two novels of his that I’ve read (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting) are “better,” I suppose it ought to be said, but Ignorance is another...more Milan Kundera has one of the most unique and immediately recognizable writing styles I’ve ever encountered. Ignorance is the third of his novels I’ve read, and there was never any doubt in my mind while reading it that, yep, it’s him all right. I find this experience of familiarity with an author quite pleasant. The other two novels of his that I’ve read (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting) are “better,” I suppose it ought to be said, but Ignorance is another excellent if brief meditation on Kundera’s classic themes—love, relationships, memory, history, politics, etc. Kundera reminds me of Yeats in the way he mixes the personal and the public/political. It’s amazing that he is able to educate the reader enough on 20th Century Czech history during the novel(s) to join him as he points out the truly fascinating things going on throughout it. The connections Kundera consistently makes between large-scale political actions affecting an entire nation of people and subtle, private moments between two lovers are nothing short of brilliant.

Ignorance is about coming back, or the impossibility of coming back, or no… how coming back is complicated. It’s about how some things change, and other things stay the same, and neither is what you would have predicted. Two Czech emigrants return to Prague after the fall of Communism, and their complex relationships with their home and with each other are not simplified but further entangled. After years of questions about themselves, their friends, and their country, their Grand Returns defy expectations and leave them with more, and more challenging, questions.

Perhaps what is most enjoyable about Kundera is his conversationalist tone, as if he’s sitting in the room with you just sharing his observations and ideas over a drink. He does not simply present a scene and leave you to interpret and analyze it as you will, but instead is quite eager to tell you why he finds it so fascinating (and in a pretty straightforward and affable manner). I’ve never disagreed with him. I really ought to own at least one of his books so that I can underline and note various sentences and paragraphs—not only are they profound and moving in their often bittersweet simplicity now, but I suspect I will have a wonderful time rereading at least one of his books in the future when I find myself in a completely different stage of my life. Then again, maybe it’s appropriate that I’m not highlighting and annotating in the margins, because when I reread Kundera in the future, the text will be the same, but I won’t be, and all the scribbles and circles and stars I may trace next to and around the ink on the page won’t allow me to completely recapture then what I’m experiencing with the text now. How bittersweet. How Kundera.(less)

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Aug 04, 2012 Logan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Although the dominant theme of the book is the experience of emigres returning to their homeland (specifically the Czech Republic), Kundera also ruminates on larger subjects such as death, memory, time, and relationships (between men and women particularly). It may help to know a little bit of Czech history before picking up this book to understand the context, but overall Kundera's thoughts and ideas tend to the universal. The story follows the lives of two main protagonists, however, Kundera's...more

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Oct 21, 2007 Vanessa Pinto rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: world-literature

I used my last 10 dollars to buy this book instead of groceries and never regretted it. Kundera refers alot to his personal life in this book. Both him and the main characters were deal with returning to your mother country after being away for so long and the memories you hold. The way Kundera deals with memories is superb and thought invoking. Although simple in language Kundera bring alive the feelings and emotions people have being away from their homeland.

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Apr 27, 2011 Fatema Alammar rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

لا أدري كم مرّة عدتُ لصفحة الغلاف، لأتأكد من كلمة "رواية" موجودة بكل ثقة ..؟!
أثناء القراءة –وهي تجربة جميلة جدا- بدا لي أن الكتاب عبارة عن عمل فلسفي كتب بطريقة قصصية شيّقة، وليس العكس، أعني لم يبدو الأمر أني أقرأ نصا سرديّا غنيّا بالفلسفة، والغوص "النفسي" العميق، والأفكار المُدهشة. مساحة السرد والوصف تتراجع، دون أن يختفي وهجُ حضورها.
"يتكشّف لنا الحنين على أنه ألم الجهل" يقول كونديرا، الذي يتحدّث عن العودة بطريقةٍ فاتنة.
"النهار يُضاء بجمال البلد المهجور، والليل برعب العودة. النهار يبين لها الجنة...more

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Jul 24, 2008 Danika rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I haven't read anything by this author in years, so it's hard for me to compare this with some of his older works. All in all, I really liked how it played with the past, present and future. I think a more appropriate title might be include the word "nostalgia". It gives a good perspective on being an emigre and the main character leaves the Czech Republic for France, as Kundera himself did. A lot of the characters are very lonely. Super fast read.

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Jul 31, 2011 Eduardo rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ignorance is a fictionalized essay on nostalgia, on the desire to return (to places, people, and situations long past). Published in 2000, about 20 years after Kundera himself emigrated to France from his native Czech Republic, the novel tells the story of two characters who had the same experience. The time is the early 1990s, right after the demise of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, and Josef and Irena (two Czech expatriates living in Denmark and France, respectively) feel the need to...more

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Aug 29, 2010 Karen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Karen by: My shame at being an asshole in an airport bookstore

The woman working behind the counter at the SFO bookstore had round warts or bumps the size of dimes and nickels covering her face and arms. I skipped to the front of the line, "I just have a question," pissed that I couldn't find a book that had plenty of sex in it, but didn't have a title written in lipstick. "Do you have any Kundera novels shelved somewhere other than just there with the rest of the fiction?" I realize now that I was trying to find In the Skin of a Lion and I had the author w...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Darya Conmigo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: russian-translation, 2013, contemporary, memory, atmospheric

Kundera can write of nostalgia, and memory, and loves that never were (and lives that never were) with false ease and light humor. His language is simple but things he writes about are never simplistic. He is mature to the extent of me craving some drama over all these profound questions of life and death, and not being able to give this book full five stars it probably deserves.

Or maybe it's me craving more meaning and more connection to others and more certainty in life - none of which you can...more

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Jan 06, 2013 Kriegslok rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I ration myself Milan Kundera as I enjoy his work so much. Ignorance is no exception. One of Kundera's quicker reads it deals with familiar themes for him of exile, human relationships and the philosphy of life. Kundera has a way of observing human life in all its futiliy, weakness and sadness yet sparked with moments of intensity that we know will soon be lost. The characters here are observed through all of this as they reconnect, or don't, after years of separation. Kundera observes and relat...more

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Jul 30, 2010 Zoë (In The Next Room) rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a love the way we reread a book or resee a movie."

Ignorance is the first book I have read by Milan Kundera, author of the Incredible Lightness of Being. The focus of Ignorance is two people, Josef and Irena, who flee Czechoslovakia when it is taken over by the Soviets and for more than twenty years make new lives as immigrants in Copenhagen and Paris, respectively. After two decades in exile they retu...more

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Apr 15, 2013 Ubiqua rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Scrittore bravo nonostante le tendenze eccessivamente aforistiche, Kundera scrive qui il breve romanzo di due esuli cechi che non si struggono più per la patria perduta, ma sono anzi recalcitranti a tornarvi anche solo in visita. Si vuole sfatare il mito della nostalgia di Ulisse e del Grande Ritorno a casa, ma anche raccontare altro; una storia adolescenziale appare a sprazzi conducendo il lettore a zig-zag tra le piccole unità narrative che caratterizzano la scrittura di Kundera, qui dedicata...more

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Aug 08, 2009 Ramin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A week ago I chose this over other books I want to read, simply because it is thin and easily fit into my laptop bag, which was crammed with other stuff on my move across the ocean. Coincidentally, as I was returning to the country in which I was raised, I was reading this book about the joys and difficulties two people experience as they return to the country in which they were raised. (The parallel ends there.)

The main characters, Irena and Josef, had fled Czechoslovakia and remained in exile...more

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Jan 13, 2011 Yasmine Alfouzan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Yasmine by: my sister.

Shelves: fiction, literature, 52-books

I was thinking while reading this book about the rating I'll give it… I was going to give it a 4-star rating wishing it could it be 4.5 stars. But while reading the last 50 pages, I definitely knew I was going to give it a 5, and quite easily, too. The ideas represented about art, history, music, writing, and philosophy in this book are probably more worthy of attention and reading than the main story. And the main story got amazingly better near the end which made me wish the story would go on;...more

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Mar 09, 2010 Bartley rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"I imagine the feelings of two people meeting again after many years. In the past they spent some time together, and therefore they think they are linked by the same experience, the same recollections. The same recollections? That's where the misunderstanding starts: they don't have the same recollections; each of them retains two or three small scenes from the past, but each has his own; their recollections are not similar; they don't intersect; and even in terms of quantity they are not compar...more

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Apr 18, 2013 James rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Kundera's "Ignorance" can be said to be polyphonic, but it might actually just be one voice - the lonely, lugubrious voice of nostalgia - echoing across space and through time. It's an unconventional but fresh and exhilarating meditation on the Great Return of Odysseus, and beams that trope through the prism of twentieth-century European political upheaval to reveal its constituent colors, those individual stories of literal and figurative emigration that create a sense of homelessness which the...more

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Mar 06, 2013 Chris Fitzgerald rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature

At his best, Kundera takes the reader on a trip through his or her own mind and personal history by writing about characters whose expectations of life (or in this case, memories of it) are reshaped by their experiences in life; once this process begins, the people in his stories have very different and very human reactions to the process according to their basic character traits and outlooks on life. This invites the reader to identify with the characters (or not) in a distinct pecking order, a...more

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May 27, 2012 Hayfa Qahtani rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

روايات كونديرا تشبه جولة بالسيارة في يوم يكاد يخنقه الضجر ! ، نفس الشعور الذي ينتابني بعد رحلة من هذا النوع والعودة للمنزل ، الخروج من رأسك قليلاً ، النظر للكون بأكمله في شوارع المدينة والعودة من جديد لحياتك . نفس الشعور يولد مع روايات كونديرا .
الفكرة الرئيسية هنا هي النوستالجيا ، وأي شيء يحكي عن الحنين يعجبني ! فكرة الغياب ثمّ العودة ، فكرة الوقوف على عتبات الذاكرة التي وُزّعت على مدننا التي تركناها خلفنا.
وهذه المدن قد تكون حقيقية فيزيائياً، أو فكرة معنوية ابتعدنا عنها ، نشاهد انفسنا في أعين...more

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Sep 27, 2011 Patrick McCoy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction

Milan Kundera is one of my favorite contemporary writers and after reading Ignorance (2002) it is clear why. He is one of the few writers writing today, that writes about ideas, big ideas like the meaning of life, love, exile and so on (another notable exception is Michel Hollenbeq). This book is about two former Czech exiles that were once connected in their youth who return to Prague after the velvet revolution and come to terms with their pasts and with those who stayed behind. There are a nu...more

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About Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera is a Czech and French writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke.

Kundera has written in both Czech and French. He revises the French translations of all his books; these therefore are not conside...more

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Quotes from Ignorance

“The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.” — 457 people liked it

“To die; to decide to die; that's much easier for an adolescent than for an adult. What? Doesn't death strip an adolescent of a far larger portion of future? Certainly it does, but for a young person, the future is a remote, abstract, unreal thing he doesn't really believe in.” — 28 people liked it

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